Wild horses, the horse mafia, and more lies and deceit...
I am glad that even though the truth is very ugly, that it is coming out. People need to open their eyes and see all the issues with the horse slaughter business. Horse slaughter is inhumane, uneccessary and cruel and is built on a web of lies and even criminal activity. ~Declan
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As Posted on the Daily Record
- By David Collins
Wild horses caught by Romanian peasants and sold to gangs for £10 may have ended up on British dinner plates
INVESTIGATORS are looking into potential links between Romanian gangs and European meat processing plants in a bid to crack the illegal horsemeat trade.
WILD horses illegally caught by peasants in Romania and sold to criminal gangs for as little as £10 may have ended up on British dinner plates, we can reveal today.
Local gangsters, nicknamed the “horse mafia”, run organised rackets to round up the animals, which they sell to slaughterhouses for a huge profit.
They also buy old workhorses from poverty-stricken farmers in the country who can’t afford to look after the animals.
Investigators were last night looking into potential links between the Romanian gangs and meat processing plants across Europe.
It’s part of efforts to crack the multi-million-pound illegal horsemeat trade, which has led to the removal of many brands of burgers and ready meals from British supermarket shelves.
The horse mafia are known to operate in the Danube delta and Transylvania.
An undercover source, who is a vet in Transylvania, revealed the animals are sold by the gangsters to Romanian abattoirs, who turn a blind eye to the illegal trade.
From there, the horsemeat is transported to processing plants and passed off as beef for use in burgers and ready meals.
Two years ago, the European Union banned the export of live horses from Romania to prevent the spread of equine infectious anaemia, a disease also known as swamp fever or horse AIDS.
Romanian farmers then began exporting horsemeat instead.
In 2011 alone, more than 6779 tons was shipped to countries such as France, Belgium, Italy and Bulgaria for processing.
The horsemeat which has now been found in frozen meals in Britain was transported from Romania to the Spanghero meat processing plant in Castelnaudary, south-west France.
Here it was butchered, apparently labelled as beef, and sent on to be used in ready and frozen meals by the French firm Comigel.
Last week, frozen food giant Findus admitted some of their beef lasagne sold in the UK contained up to 100 per cent horsemeat.
Our source also spoke of a “large French supplier” who buys the cheap meat from Romanian wild horses and mixes it with meat bought from legitimate suppliers.
He said: “I’ve heard of a French supplier who works with the gangs to buy cheap horsemeat.
“This illegal meat is mixed with legimate horsemeat and, by the time it is sold up the supply chain, nobody knows the difference.”
The vet said the wild horses are treated appallingly once they’ve been rounded up.
He said: “They are not fed properly and given no stable.
“They are beaten, whipped and transported to abattoirs in double-decker lorries.
“They are packed in by the dozen, with no sunlight, terrified, and at the end of their journey they are killed.
“Then a few months later, the meat ends up on the shelves of a supermarket labelled as something completely different.”
He claimed the gangs bribe state vets, who sign off transportation documents even if the horses have no microchips – which proves they are not properly registered.
The vet said: “The problem of wild horses being sold is something which goes on in the marchlands of the Danube delta, particularly the Tulcea district.
“The locals capture them in the wild and then sell them for between £10 and £20 a time to criminal gangs. The horses are quite small and do not carry much meat on them.”
Locals in Tulcea yesterday defended their actions, claiming they own the animals which run free in the swampland.
One said: “We freed many horses belonging to us because we could not afford to keep them. How do we know they are not our horses which have bred over the years?
“We sell them for meat and it keeps us alive. What is wrong with this?”
But Grigore Baboniau, of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve, said: “Horses that have no clear owner become the property of the mayor’s office. Any capture of these horses for meat is illegal.”
Prices paid by abattoirs for a legimately sold horse vary. However, a 1100lb mare will sell for about £270.
Many farmers in Romania are finding horses too expensive to keep and are selling them to local abattoirs.
A drought last year, which has meant hay has to be imported, has made the problem worse.
Our source said: “Horses are expensive to keep, so farmers will sell them for food to make some quick money.”
A spokeswoman for World Horse Welfare said: “What we have seen in Romania is that there is a lack of knowledge of basic horse care standards, which were less of a priority during communist rule.
“More recently, economic conditions have made it harder for people to feed their horses and anecdotally more are going to slaughter because of that.
“Many of the horses sent for slaughter are horses at the end of their working lives or those people can’t afford to feed.”
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